For Good
by meldahlie
Summary: Prince Cor is glad to get a visit from Bree. But why particularly that day? And what is it which bothers Bree at Anvard? One-shot; set after The Horse and His Boy.


For Good

Prince Cor is glad to get a visit from Bree. But why particularly that day? And what is it which bothers Bree about Anvard?

One-shot; set after The Horse and His Boy.

~:~:~

Prince Cor of Archenland came whistling up the slope towards the castle of Anvard. It was a bright, happy, strident whistle; the whistle of a day that could only possibly be improved if – if a great Talking Horse whinnied its greeting from the top of the slope.

Cor's whistle broke off in a wild mis-note, and he flung up one hand in reply to the whinny. "Bree! Bree!"

"The soldiers at the gate told me you were down in the valley," said Bree, once the first flurry of face-to-face welcome was over. "So I just waited."

"I was only down by the bushes." Cor rested his arm comfortably across Bree's back as they stepped out across the castle lawns, and remembered a night – how many years ago now? – when the war horse had seemed as high as a haystack. "You could have come down to find me, not had to hang about. One slope can't be that much, when you've trotted over the Pass."

Bree swished his tail about. "I didn't want to disturb you."

"Bree!" Cor stopped in his tracks. "Unless I'm in council with Father, there's not much _you'd_ be counted as disturbing me in!"

"The time last spring when you were arguing at the top of your voice with the Tarkheena?"

"Well – well–" Cor blushed, and looked down at the grass. "Well, firstly that was probably just as well you disturbed us, before we, er – got any crosser. And secondly, well–" He blushed a little deeper, and reached up to rub at Bree's neck and mane. "That's why I'm so glad you came today, 'cause you see, well – well, Corin says we'll only go on squabbling and making up, all the rest of our lives – but Aravis and I got engaged last night."

Cor blurted out the last bit in a rush, and then buried his burning face in the horse's shoulder.

"Boy!" said Bree reproachfully. "How can I make the congratulations appropriate to the occasion while you are looking the other way?"

"Don't need congratulations," Cor mumbled, still rubbing at Bree's mane. "We were, er, kind of having a blazing row at the time."

"My sincerest felicitations and congratulations," said Bree firmly, ignoring this last fact. "To you, and to the Tarkheena."

"You'll have to come and tell her that," said Cor, grinning. "But Bree, that doesn't let you off the hook for thinking you might disturb me, just down the slope. That's nonsense!"

There was no doubt about it. This time Bree swished his tail in a very evasive and reluctant manner. "Well, I … I …"

Cor poked him in the ribs. "Are you growing fat and lazy?"

To that, he got a very indignant tail swish. "Nothing of the sort! By the Lion's Mane, some humans-!"

"Some humans," said Cor cheerily, "are still waiting to know why their old friends couldn't walk down a slope, a little, little slope, to see them."

Bree looked solemn. "The graves."

"Graves?"

"The Calormene graves. From the assault on Anvard. They buried the dead in the ditch down the slope. Including my old master Anradin." Bree shivered a little. "I don't really like to walk past them."

Cor was silent for a moment. "But you don't believe in ghost nonsense, do you?"

"No," said Bree. "I know he is gone for good. But it – he – is just not pleasant to be reminded of."

Cor gave him a sympathetic rub on the shoulder, round and round in little thoughtful circles. "Bree?" he said eventually. "Do you know what I think, whenever I remember Anradin? I'm glad."

He nodded firmly as Bree stared at him. "Glad. If you hadn't been enslaved to Anrehdin, he wouldn't have been riding a Talking Horse the night he stopped at the hut. And I wouldn't have been stolen by you; and we'd never have met Aravis and Hwin, or fallen in with the Narnians in Tashbaan, or fled across the desert with the news, or anything. I'd be a slave, dead in a ditch in Calormene, and Father and all would have been-" Cor swallowed hard. "Slaughtered. Right here in Anvard."

Bree flung up his head in a protesting snort. "By the Lion-!"

"Yes," Cor agreed. "By the Lion's grace, it was not so. But all because of Anradin. So – he's gone for good; but he came for good, too. Even a dyed-in-the beard Tarkaan fits into Aslan's plans for us somewhere."

For a moment, the Horse and his Boy stood, thinking. And then Bree swished his tail and tossed his head and snorted. "For good! Anradin! Boy! You have grown very wise, with that education of yours!"

At that, the Crown Prince of Archenland laughed happily, and wound his arm over the neck of his old friend. "Well, you know it all began with somebody teaching me to ride."

~:~:~:~


End file.
